


Save Me That Dance

by writing_as_tracey



Series: This Isn't Freedom - It's Bughead Prompts [4]
Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - Captain America: the First Avenger, Captain America: The First Avenger, F/M, Feels, Gen, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Steve Rogers & Peggy Carter - Freeform, Tumblr Prompts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-05
Updated: 2017-07-05
Packaged: 2018-11-28 06:39:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11412348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writing_as_tracey/pseuds/writing_as_tracey
Summary: Tumblr prompt:Bughead as Steve and Peggy? You get to decide whether fluff or angst; whether we're WWII-era or contemporary AU; and most importantly - who ends up as Captain America!





	Save Me That Dance

**_Save Me That Dance_**  

* * *

Her voice crackled across the radio channels, and he feels his heart beat in double time. She’s alive, but – he can hear the tremble in her voice when she speaks. “Come in, this is Captain Cooper – do you read me?”

“Captain Cooper, this is—” but Jughead’s shoving Kevin out of the chair and reaching for the microphone, his hands trembling.

“Betty?” his voice his shaking with nerves. “Betts? Are you alright? Is everything okay?”

There’s a pause on her end, and then her voice crackles across the speaker. “It’s okay – Clifford Blossom is dead.”

He frowns. “What about the plane?”

She pauses on her end, and his heart clenches.

“Um, well,” she begins, her voice rising in inflection as she tries to stick as much pep into it as possible. “That’s a little bit tougher to explain.”

“Give me your coordinates. I’ll find you a safe landing site, Betts.”

There’s silence across the line again, and then her voice comes back. Her voice is tinny in the speakers, but firm. “There’s not gonna be a safe landing, Jug.” She then stops, and he can hear the dedication as she says, “But I can try and force it down.”

It wasn’t fair.

He closed his eyes tightly, almost in pain. His breathing is laboured and he takes an unsteady breath, willing to not let the tears fall from his eyes. This was just his luck – he finds a dame that he’s actually interested in, for once in his life, and she’s… she’s everything he could ever want. But, as usual, the timing is just so wrong.

He pictures Betty in his mind, her blonde hair loose and wavy, her bright green eyes looking up at him when he kissed her on the back of the speeding car behind – the Red Menace - Blossom’s plane. He thinks of her soft lips and the tiny, little contented sigh that escaped when their lips parted.

He remembers when he first saw her, this tiny little skinny thing, all elbows and knees and expressive green eyes against a pale face. She had come running to Erskine, the doctor who helped her brother go to Europe to kill Nazis only to never return home. She wanted revenge, she wanted to help, she wanted to stop “the bullies.”

He was a special forces aid-de-camp for his father and he was expected to follow the line like all the other Jones’ in the family; as a third, it was given he would dedicate his life to the service was his country. He was fine with that. He was fine with dying for his country too, except he was too damn good at firing a gun, too damn good at keeping a stoic face, and he was sent to Germany to spy and then to France and Algeria, and then back home to the good ol’ U-S of A to a top secret military project.

Not her. He never wanted her to be touched by the darkness of war. But somehow, that cutesy little girl he remembered growing up with alongside their best friend, Archie Andrews, had been chosen for the Super Soldier program, because who would ever expect a little girl to be their secret weapon?

(He swallows a thick knot in his throat at the thought of Archie – he went down somewhere in Bavaria, in the mountains. They didn’t even have a body to bury.

 _“Save me a dance?”_  she asked him the last time they were together, during their downtime in Paris. He was so sure she was interested in Dilton Doiley – fucking poutine – that he failed to miss all the obvious signs. He missed so much.)

And now they were completely, utterly out of time.

He wonders what she can see, flying that plane across the Atlantic. Is it white? Bright? Is the sun out or is it night? Is she scared? Is she frightened about being alone?

“I’ll – I’ll get Doiley on the line, Betts. He’ll know what to do,” he says, his voice thick.

“There’s not enough time. This thing’s moving too fast and it’s heading for New York,” argues Betty, her voice passionate. He frowns at the next line. “For  _Riverdale,_ Jug. I gotta put her in the water.”

Behind him, he can hear his father shuffling forward. The kick ass, take-no-prisoners Colonel Forsythe Pendleton Jones the Second reaches forward and places his hand on his son’s shoulder, and Jughead tenses under the touch. He knows what his father is trying to say.

He brushes him off. “Please don’t… d-don’t do this. We – We have time. We can figure something out.”

There is a crack of static and a pop against the old radio and Jughead grinds his teeth together, turning to shout at Kevin, his father, anyone else in the damn tower to get Doiley up there and help him figure this out.

“Right now I’m in the middle of nowhere. If I wait any longer a lot of people are gonna die,” she says, and he thinks he can hear the edge in her voice, the brittleness of it. “Jug. This is my choice.”

“ _Betts_.” His voice is low and pained, and his nearly moans her name out in despair.

There is something crackling, different in the radio – he thinks he knows what it is – in his heart he knows what it is, but his mind won’t let him figure it out – (it’s the sound of the propellers on the plane cutting through the air differently, because she’s diving, aiming the nose down.)

“Juggie?” her voice pops across the radio.

He bites back a sniffle.

“Betty,” he says, clutching the microphone stand in his hand. His knuckles turn white. “I’m here. Sweetheart, I’m here.”

“I’m gonna need a rain check on that dance.”

His laugh is more a sob than something joyous. He brings his hand up and wipes at his eyes, rubbing the heel of his hand against his face. “Okay then, Betts. A week next Saturday at Pop’s.”

There’s a crackle and static again, but he can hear her huff of laughter. “Sounds like a date.”

“Eight o’clock on the dot,” he adds, because he’s building the fantasy in his mind and he won’t let go to this now. He can picture her, so clearly in his mind’s eyes, wearing a beautiful green dress that matches her eyes, her hair long, loose, and wavy against the red of her lipstick. She’ll look shyly at him from under her lashes and he’ll take her hand, his heart fluttering and wonder how the hell he got so lucky. “Don’t you dare be late. Understood?”

“You know,” she laughs across the line, and he pretends not to hear the tremble in her voice. “I still don’t know how to dance.”

Jughead grins, thinking back to those nights when he put Jellybean on his feet, holding her in his arms as he taught his little sister to waltz and foxtrot. “I’ll show you how. Just be there.”

“We’ll have the band play something slow.”

Jughead laughs. “Maybe Ella FitzGerald.”

“I’d hate to step on your—”

Static cracks across the connection. There’s a pop and a crackle and an odd sort of fuzz to the sound.

“Betts?”

Jughead slowly stands, his hands trembling as they let go of the microphone. He leans in further, across the console of the radio tower, unaware of the tears streaking down his cheeks.

“Betty?”

There is no reply, just static.

“Jug,” his father says, from somewhere behind him, but he’s numb, his cheeks hot and wet.

They never have their dance.

* * *

FIN

 

**Author's Note:**

> I love you, [village_skeptic](http://archiveofourown.org/users/village_skeptic/pseuds/village_skeptic), but oh my god this prompt killed me. I was in tears. I love Steve and Peggy, but ugggghhh ❤️
> 
> Remember, send [prompts](http://writing-as-tracey.tumblr.com) or love!!


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